


A Human's Guide To The Venusian Rat Trap

by DesertScribe



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - All Planets Have Atmospheres Breathable By Humans, Care And Feeding Guide, Carnivorous Plants, Gen, In-Universe Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-01 06:53:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13992843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/pseuds/DesertScribe
Summary: Congratulations on the purchase of your new Venusian Rat Trap!  There are a few things you need to know about it.





	A Human's Guide To The Venusian Rat Trap

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quillori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/gifts).



By interplanetary law, all Venusian Rat Traps, also known as Venusian Charnel Pit Plants, also known as Danger Spikes, also known as Xedfellian Spike Plants, also known as High-Rise Poison Snake Weeds, also known as Psychedelic Stabby Grabby Weeds, also known as Poor Human's Ceviche Pot must be sold with the following information:

**WARNING: All species and varieties of Venusian Rat Trap and their close relatives have venom and other fluids which are highly toxic to most other Venusian lifeforms, and the Xodgul people of Venus are no exception. Under Venusian law, it is a class three felony punishable by up to five years of indentured servitude to bring a Venusian Rat Trap without a proper containment cage* into public facilities known to be used by Xodgul children under the age of fifteen. It is a class five felony punishable by up to ten years of indentured servitude to bring a Venusian Rat Trap without a proper containment cage into public facilities known to be used by Xodgul children under the age of five. It is a class one felony punishable by up to one year of indentured servitude for each offense to plant a Venusian Rat Trap without a proper containment cage closer to public property than the length of the mature plant's longest tentacle at full extension, plus fifteen Venusian decimeters.**

*The legal definition of what qualifies as a "proper containment cage" is determined by an equation which takes into account the individual Venusian Rat Trap's current size, tentacle length, grasping barb length, and estimated maximum strength, which is in turn calculated either using an equation based on tentacle length and tentacle girth or an equation based on tentacle length, tentacle girth, age, and exact species. Be aware that a Venusian Rat Trap's containment needs may increase drastically as it grows, especially for the larger varieties, and what was legally sufficient for your specimen less than a month ago may no longer be enough despite little or no increase of spire height, especially when entering the rainy season, during which time the extra available food and moisture can cause a great increase in strength and general level of vigor.

**WARNING: Venusian Rat Trap venom and, to a lesser extent, Venusian Rat Trap sap are psychoactive substances for humans and many other mammals, birds, and reptiles of Earth origin. The recreational use of them by adult humans is legal in many but not all regions of human habitation in the solar system. Please consult your local jurisdiction's laws for minimum age and maximum legal level of impairment before partaking. Never drive, fly, or operate other heavy machinery while under the influence of Venusian Rat Trap venom. Medium and large sized animals affected by Venusian Rat Trap Sap should be supervised until the effects wear off to prevent accidental injury while impaired.**

**WARNING: The grasping barbs of an Venusian Rat Trap are difficult to fully sterilize due to being porous on a microscopic level, and in wild-type varieties they are often serrated to increase the difficulty of removal from the victim after lodging in flesh. ** Squeezing the tentacles of blunt-barbed varieties directly into an open wound is also discouraged for health and safety reasons. Any human intending to make use of Venusian Rat Trap venom's psychoactive properties is encouraged to milk the venom glands into a sterile container and then use a sterile hypo-spray applicator instead of allowing direct injection from the tentacle. This minimizes risks of injury and of later bacterial infection (and, in the case of multiple humans making use of the same plant, the transmission of bloodborne diseases) and also allows precise control over the dosage amount. Remember, venom concentration varies based on time of year and local growing conditions, becoming more potent during dry times and more dilute during wetter times. Also, the amount of venom delivered in a single strike can vary greatly even between individual specimens of the same variety, size, age, and general state of health. Accidental overdoses are rarely fatal but are never enjoyable. Always be sure to partake of Venusian Rat Trap venom safely and responsibly and only when and where it is legal to do so.

**WARNING: Venusian Rat Trap gastric juice and Venusian Rat Trap sap have been shown to cause contact dermatitis in humans when left on the skin for long periods of time. In very rare cases, it can cause more severe allergic reactions, requiring medical treatment. Always wash all skin, clothing, or any other surface contaminated by these substances.**

**WARNING: While the contents of a Venusian Rat Trap's gastric cavity are generally edible by humans as long as the plant has not consumed anything which was already poisonous to humans, and some people even consider it to be a delicacy, the flesh of the plant contains both an internal scaffold of indigestible woody fibers similar to an Earth cactus and an interlaced network of silica fibers and large silica spines, all of which can cause severe lacerations and other damage to the mouth and digestive system of any human attempting to eat it.** Some herbivorous Earth mammals, such as goats, with digestive systems more suited to a diet of tough plants have been observed to consume the flesh of Venusian Rat Traps with little ill effect once they got past the tentacles, but it is not recommended.

* * *

 **Warning:** The pamphlet you are currently reading should have come to you attached to a Venusian Rat Trap of the Miniature Low Venom, Non-Seeding "MacKenzie's Special" Blue Spire variety, easily identifiable by white tentacle heads with blunted nubs in place of the usual grasping barbs and also by the narrow red and purple lines running vertically along its bright blue central spike. If your specimen does not match these characteristics, then it has been misidentified and/or mislabeled, and all care should be taken when handling it until proper identification can be made. Remember, for the average layperson, a visual inspection is not enough to distinguish between certain High Venom Venusian Rat Trap and Low Venom Venusian Rat Trap varieties as some have nearly identical external structures. Please consult an expert and never to perform a venom assay without proper training and protective equipment. While no known Venusian Rat Trap species has been shown to have venom potent enough to be lethal to the average human of full health when the dosage level is limited to what can be delivered by a single plant, there have been fatalities recorded in humans with impaired liver function and other metabolic disorders. Also, any species of Venusian Rat Traps with non-blunted tentacle spines, whether wild-type or domesticated, can be capable of causing severe lacerations and/or puncture wounds. Always handle with care.

* * *

Hello, and congratulations on acquiring this fine specimen of Venusian flora-fauna. Multicellular life originating from Mercury, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Planet X, and Ceres, as well as from many of the solar system's inhabitable moons can generally be classified as belonging to the animal or the plant kingdom. However, for multicellular life of Venusian origin, the division between animal and plant is less of a binary distinction and more of a gradual spectrum between the two, and the Venusian Rat Trap is a perfect example of that fact. Its cellular structure has both cell membranes and cell walls like a plant, but it also has functional eye spots and a basic nervous system like an animal. Its tentacles score high on the mobility and dexterity scale for a plant, but many Jovian plants score higher, as anyone who has ever had the locks of their refrigeration units picked while on a walking holiday in the cloud jungles of Jupiter can tell you. We should all be thankful for this fact, because while Jovian Float Vines and Flying Flowers outshine human children in terms of skill and determination when stealing sugary carbonated beverages, Venusian Rat Traps are obligate carnivores with the appetites to match, and they would make much less charming combination pets-houseplants if they were capable of opening their own cages.

Like all life, Venusian Rat Traps evolved to thrive on their planet of origin. On Venus, different species and subspecies of them can be found growing wild on all major landmasses. On Earth, they need more care in order for them to flourish. No species of Venusian Rat Trap has yet to become naturalized anywhere on Earth, though there are reports of a few specimens planted in heavily shaded areas adjacent to sulfur-rich hot springs surviving without further human aid. Most Venusian Rat Traps on Earth will require more care than that, usually in the form of sulfur supplements. Earth grown Venusian Rat Traps and other flora and flora-fauna from Venus usually achieve optimum results when grown in greenhouses with glass specially tinted and frosted to mimic Venus's perpetual cloud cover. In years past, these structures were only available as custom made specialty items, but they have now become popular enough to be readily found in all shapes and sizes for any hobbyist who wants one. For those who wish to keep their Venusian Rat Trap indoors, gauzy curtains, translucent blinds, or tinted window film all work just as well.

**Your Venusian Rat Trap prefers medium to low indirect light and high humidity.**

**Venusian Rat Traps grow best in a slightly acidic soil mix of two parts sand to one part clay and one part decayed plant matter. Keep soil moist, occasionally saturating.** Most varieties of Venusian Rat Trap, including the Mackenzie's Special varieties, can survive long term in dry soil if atmospheric humidity is high enough, but such conditions are stressful for the plant and will result in reduced digestive capabilities, significantly slower growth, slightly lowered bioluminescence, drooping leaves, and reduced tentacle activity. Reduced digestive capabilities can, in the long term, result in a plant starving even as it is being overfed if it receives food faster than it can process it.

 **Feed it insects, small local vermin, ground meat, or rehydrated protein ration powder one to three times a week depending on meal size (see separate feeding chart for proper weekly feeding amount based on plant size) during the warmer half of the year, reducing meal sizes by one third to one half during the cooler months.** If the plant is being kept in an environment with climate control kept at uniform levels throughout the year, then meal sizes may be kept more consistent, though some variation is still recommended if the location's light levels have seasonal variation in light levels. If feeding live prey to your Venusian Rat Trap, it is best to set the prey loose inside the containment cage and allow the tentacles to capture, inject, and insert the dying prey into one of the gastric vents. Depending on size, insects may either be caught by the tentacles, in which case they will be treated as any other prey, or become mired in the thick gastric juice oozing down the outside of the central spire, in which case gravity will carry them into the gastric cavity without further assistance. All other forms of food should be manually inserted directly into the gastric vents. The long-handled tools necessary for accomplishing this task without damaging your plant's leaves or tentacles are available for sale in most stores specializing in Venusian flora-fauna and can also be ordered online.

 **Fertilize the surrounding soil once a month with any of the high sulfur content blends developed for Venusian plant life.** If you are using an ultrasonic humidifier to maintain atmospheric moisture levels for your Venusian Rat Trap, adding sulfur supplements to the water can also be beneficial to the plant, though it is recommended to only do so if the plant is in a sealed terrarium or other contained space as the smell can be highly pervasive and difficult to remove from fabric and other porous surfaces. Sulfur supplements are not recommended for evaporative humidifiers as they may cause the unit to clog.

**With proper care and feeding, your Venusian Rat Trap will be an easy, low maintenance pet/houseplant, and its bioluminescent central spire will serve as a beautiful natural nightlight and conversation piece for decades to come!**

* * *

Special Care Note: The MacKenzie's Special varieties of Venusian Rat Trap, first bred by Gertrude MacKenzie of Yeehaw Junction (originally known as Jackass Junction or Jackass Crossing, both names are equally likely to be found in copies of exotic plant catalogs and breed registries from the period), Florida, United States Of America, Earth in the late 1930s, has a much smaller root system and gastric cavity in relation to the size of the central spire than more typical varieties, allowing them to thrive in smaller containers. However, the smaller gastric cavity renders the MacKenzie's Specials less able to cope with either feast or famine conditions, so all care should be taken to avoid both over- and underfeeding.

Underfeeding will result in the plant entering starvation conditions, which progresses in several stages. The first stage occurs when the gastric cavity empties of sufficient usable food. At first, there is little to no externally visible indication that this has happened aside from an increase of tentacle aggressiveness as the plant becomes desperate to replenish its food cache. This increased level of activity only lasts a few days before the plant no longer has the energy reserves to sustain such behavior. Some growers who exhibit Venusian Rat Traps competitively will intentionally force their plants to enter first stage starvation so that it will appear livelier for the judges, but this is stressful for the plant, especially in conjunction with the rigors of travel, and variations between individual plants make timing the last feeding before an event for maximum effect difficult and variable even for experts. Inducing first stage starvation too late will not produce noticeable results in time for the competition while still stressing the plant. Inducing it too early will result in the plant's activity levels peaking too early, leaving it in less than optimal condition and possibly completely unfit for competition with a long recovery ahead of it.

As the Venusian Rat Trap's energy reserves continue to fall, it enters the second stage starvation, during which the leaves droop and take on a pale, wrinkled appearance, and the tentacles become lethargic, only exhibiting prey-seeking behavior when stimulated both visually and olfactorily at close range. As the plant enters the third stage of starvation, its bioluminescence dims by more than fifty percent, and its production of gastric juices slows. Within two or three days of gastric juice production beginning to fail, all tentacles containing fertilized seeds will simultaneously detach without the usual process of stem atrophy and use the last of their energy reserves to seek out more hospitable growing conditions. Humans colloquially refer to this event as "the rats leaving the sinking ship," while all Xodgul cultures have much less complimentary descriptions of the process, most of them ranging from the impolite to the downright obscene. This is not surprising, given Xodgul biological sensitivity to Venusian Rat Trap venom and the resulting hostile relationship with the plant. A proper containment cage will prevent the detached tentacles from escaping to disperse and plant themselves in new locations, but a responsible Venusian Rat Trap owner would never allow their plant to reach such a state to begin with.

After tentacle detachment, a Venusian Rat Trap in third stage starvation might still be nursed back to health, but it is a long and difficult process with a low success rate, and even those plants which have been returned to health after their ordeal will have greatly reduced longevity and will be unlikely to survive a second starvation of such drastic levels. Also be aware that some tentacle detachment may occur even if the recovery process is begun during the earliest part of third stage starvation. Non-seeding varietals cannot produce viable seeds, so tentacles rarely if ever detach. This results in the plant giving fewer visual cues that allow the owner to estimate the plant's progression through third stage starvation, but full tentacle retention makes the recovery process faster and easier.

If starvation continues, a Venusian Rat Trap will eventually pass a biological "point of no return," at which point the plant enters the fourth stage of starvation and recovery becomes one hundred percent impossible. By this time, the plant has used up all of its energy stores. Its bioluminescence fades, and gastric juice production ceases entirely, even if there is still plenty of moisture in the surrounding soil and atmosphere. Any remaining tentacles cease responding to direct stimulation, and full death of the plant follows soon after.

Overfeeding can kill a Venusian Rat Trap just as surely as starvation, and it can happen either more slowly or more rapidly than starvation. Overfeeding occurs when the gastric cavity fills with food faster than the plant can produce sufficient gastric juices to process it all. A Venusian Rat Trap's gastric juices act as a preservative as much as they assist in digestion, and if there is not enough to process the contents of the gastric cavity then the contents can rot, which in turn can lead to necrosis of the lining of the gastric cavity and main taproot. Even if the plant does not immediately suffer necrosis, the odor of the rotting gastric cavity contents can attract scavenging animals and insects, which will either exacerbate the overfeeding situation or, in the case of larger non-Venusian animals, directly damage the plant while attempting to get to the source of the carrion they detect. Even on a lesser scale that does not threaten your plant's health, it is not a pleasant smell to have in your vicinity.

Be aware that a Venusian Rat Trap does not have a brain as such and only minimal methods of detecting and responding to anything resembling a sense of satiety. When the gastric cavity fills beyond a certain point, the gastric vents will eventually constrict to reduce further entry until the current food load has been processed, but the process by which they constrict is slow, and they cannot close all the way. To make matters worse, the individual tentacles have a primitive ganglion cluster like an insect to allow them to process and act on the input from their eyespots and antenna, but they have no nerve connection or communication with the rest of the plant and thus no way of knowing when it would be in their best interest to stop catching and feeding available food to the main body of the plant. In that respect, the tentacles are like separate beings that just happen to share a genetic code and a vascular system with the main plant, behaving more like individuals in a hive than as parts of a single organism. Overfeeding is one of the most common mistakes committed by inexperienced Venusian Rat Trap owners. It is less common in the wild where a plant must catch all its own prey and can only consume whatever is small enough to fit whole through one of its gastric vents, but it still possible, especially in areas where snakes or other long and narrow animals are common.

* * *

 **Some Important Cultural Reminders:** While humans have grown very fond of the Venusian Rat trap both for their aesthetics and their psychoactive properties, it is important to maintain sensitivity to other species' understandable dislike of them. On Venus, even when a Venusian Rat Trap is being kept on human-owned property in a containment cage of legally sufficient robustness, it is considered extremely rude to have them anywhere within view of public thoroughfares. It is even ruder to position them close to building entrances. While doing so may serve as a clear indication of "No Solicitations" it is also a sure way to indicate that you are not interested in making friends with anyone either, as all Xodgul and many Venus-born humans will avoid approaching for all but the most important of circumstances.

For interiors, if you have any intention of ever inviting guests of any species into your home, never have a Venusian Rat Trap in a building's main entryway, communal gathering areas, or food preparation areas. Sometimes these places are the dwelling's best locations for growing a Venusian Rat Trap, but even in those cases it is not polite to leave them there in the open when expecting company. Always move your Venusian Rat Traps behind closed doors (or, in the case of open plan living spaces, into secluded corners, preferably behind divider screens) when expecting company. If your Venusian Rat Trap is too big to move, then be sure to at least fully cover its cage with a fully opaque and puncture resistant material.

Once only consumed as a last resort by desperate human stranded in the Venusian wilds back in the heady but dangerous first years of interplanetary exploration by the Early-Victorian Rocket Men and Women, and then only consumed by the poor, there has been a recent rise in the popularity of enjoying the "ceviche" harvested from the gastric cavities of Venusian Rat Traps. It has been appearing on the menus of many restaurants catering to humans, even ones which cater to other species as well, and entire cookbooks have been published on the subject. Though some Xodgul have embraced the new trend, for many it is still a strong cultural taboo, so you should never surprise a guest with it unless you already know their preferences.

Never gift a Venusian Rat Trap to a Xodgul under any circumstances, because that is considered to be a death threat, even when the plant is properly contained. In some localities it is merely considered to be extremely rude. In others it is a legally actionable offense.

Remember, the tall, narrow blue triangle which has been the Xodgul symbol for danger since time immemorial, historically used by all indigenous cultures of Venus despite their many other cultural differences, was based on the glowing spire of a Venusian Rat Trap, and the symbol and the plant are still considered to be synonymous with each other. Never let your love for your new Venusian Rat Trap stand in the way of being a good neighbor.


End file.
